Yo yo. We had some stuff go on this past week, you were all there. You listened to the pod so you largely know if anything significant happened but here’s another recap for your face to look at:
We started off the week of new teammates with an interesting development – we had an Add/Drop before the waiver claims went through! Who knew that could happen? Not me, that’s for sure. I guess you can only drop in preparation for a later pick-up, thanks for the tip Bonez. Not sure how useful it really is but good to know. We’ll be seeing more of these in the future.
The BIG story of the week was the man who would replace the number 1 pick in nearly every fantasy football league in existence. It would be useful to remember, however, that the man replacing the #1 is in fact NOT the #1 himself. Perhaps it’s a bit of a placebo effect or some form of Murphy’s Law that had more than half the league thinking the big shoes of CMC needed to be (and would be) filled by the man with a name sounding like the combination of a nursery rhyme and a Ben & Jerry’s flavor. $144 FAAB was offered up in total for this man, who I had just heard of the previous Sunday, but in the end it was Kris who ended up taking the cake with a whopping $41 out the door. Chubby Hubby returned the favor by putting up a measly 8 points, we know this already. Lost to Max by about 12, Jared Cook being added to the line-up kept this loss from being more embarrassing. Looking at the table now, it almost seems like everyone else who bid put in progressively higher amounts just to get Kris to overpay like in a classic eBay scenario. At least you can take solace in the fact that he played better than the player you dropped for him – no one.
My pick-up of Dalton Schultz seems like more and more of a good move as the days go by, we’ll see if that extends to weeks as George Kittle is dealing with some more injuries (which is the exact thing I was afraid of when I stuck his nametag on my spot on the draft board). Kinda sucks that no one else even went for him and I spent $21 though. It made by total budget afterwards $69, so I got that going for me, which is…wait for it…wait for it…nice. Moving on:
Sports betting, NFTs, and now FAAB? Is there anything Abie can’t do? Our man Baberaham Leider continues his series of calculated moves to get exactly what he pays for, if not more, in his acquisition of Hunter Renfrow for $11. The 13.5 points he grabbed on Monday Night were just what he needed to knock The Commish off the top spot in the Power Rankings. We should really start thinking about how we’re gonna beat this guy before it’s too late and he’s wearing that championship belt all over New City. When no money is involved, Abie can afford to drop Quintez Cephus (10.3) for a shot at Nick Westbrook-Ikhine (4.4). We’ll see if that move plays out long-term in an upcoming project I’m working on, but I’m sure Abie will still be taking care of his chickens by the time that drops later in the season.
Speaking of Abie, he’s playing Brad in the upcoming week. Beans and I speculated what they would talk about if they were the only two in a room together. After relistening this morning, I realized it’s pretty heartwarming to think that a New City Jew and an Honorary Congeroid would actually have a lot to discuss. Aside from the obvious topics of fantasy football, hockey (I’m convinced without any inquiry that Brad’s a Penguins guy despite the Philly football loyalty) and golf, they could both talk about having dark hair and being Big Burley Boys. That’s really all you need in life. Anyway, Brad picked up the Titans Defense ($8, 2 pts.) who did nothing for him. He also pulled the move I mentioned last week where he put the same player to be dropped for multiple pick-ups, so the offer for the Bengals D ($8, 1 pt.) fell through, not that it would make a difference. I actually decided to do the same move on my offer for Tim Patrick ($5, 5.4 pts.), so you’re welcome Brent.
With all of this other stuff going on, it’s easy to see how this next claim flew a bit under the radar. Longtime Martian mainstay, Mike Gesicki, is starting to get hot (more hot than he is to begin with lol). He may as well be the Dolphins WR1 until we hear back if Jaylen Waddle is good or not. Tommy Bonez, the Comeback Kid, picked up the boy for $2 and got a very handsome 14.2 points out of it already. Those points stayed on the bench, but in the end it didn’t even matter (RIP Chester Bennington) because he had defeated Brent Flandrews by a solid 15 points. On top of that, he outbid Vigs by just a dollar, and even if the losing bid in question was itself one dollar, that could’ve been a gamechanger if it went the other way. Sneaky sneaky, I’m keeping an eye on this.
My roommate has mentioned a few times that he picked up Dawson Knox for free and was rewarded with 18.20 points. I’d like to imagine if someone from 1820 was transported to today, they’d be impressed by this pick-up, but sadly it’s less impressive when you also lose, so here’s to another strong showing next week.
Last thing I’ll say is, surprisingly, a compliment to Max. It’s not terribly significant, but he picked up the Colts defense, who got him 10 points in his 12.6 point win against our top spender of the week. Mike Williams. By the way, I listened to that Paul Pena song you sent me and then a few others on the album afterwards. Pretty good stuff.
Alright, that’s about it for The Wire this week, remember not to spend it all in one place! Check out the charts below, have a happy Friday, and Go League.
Since I won’t be able to bless y’all with The Wire until either tomorrow or Friday, I figured I should sate your ravenous appetite for League content until the pod drops with another amusing table of stats. It’s pretty self explanatory, a team beats another team by a large margin, that margin is bigger than the total score of another team that played that week. Sometimes it includes the team that created the margin itself, and I’m still not sure if this is a testament to the team that won or lost to create such a big margin, but these are the interesting and useless facts you’ve come to expect from us here at Must Be Sunday. Gotta go record, enjoy!
Tyreek Hill enjoys a nice postgame moment with his son Beans after dropping a 40 burger, leading the way for Jack to easily take their week 4 matchup
Damn, is it October already? The fantasy season is flying along at an alarming rate, and I canât believe itâs already time to update this weekâs power rankings. Feelâs like just yesterday I was analyzing the rosters post-draft. Fast forward to now and certain teams are riding high while others are completely dismantled â with plenty of teams falling somewhere in-between. I hope youâre all wondering where your team falls. If you arenât and are just scrolling through to find Jackâs latest LeagueStory or whatever the fuck heâs got drummed up for us this week, well Iâm disappointed. But I digress. Anyway, here we goâŚ
#10. Beans Corp â Brendan Cahill (Previous Ranking: 6) Jesus Christ. Beans, I wonât blame you if you want to keep scrolling here. Thereâs not much to report other than that your team is I currently a complete dumpster fire. I mean seriously, your team is putting up early day Ryan performances. I knew it be tough sledding this week from the jump after CMC went down and you lost the bidding on Chubba Hubbard. Things only got worse as the Bengals defense Bungled and only scored 1 measly point Thursday night against Urban Meyer. Pathetic. Sunday did not prove much better. Iâll keep it short because Iâm sure everyone is aware and doesnât need the full recap â but Sunday was about as bad a fantasy day as weâve all seen. Keep your chin up, these weeks happen. But for at least one week, we have a new team in pole position to the stand-up stage. Yuck.
#9. South Jersey 4th & Schlong â Brad Peddito (Previous Ranking: 10) Who was the biggest winner from Beanâs abortion of a week? Brad of course. Consider it an early wedding present from Brendan. Well Bradâs week 4 went about the same as his first 3 week, which in short means not good. But hey, youâre out of the #10 spot. What do you know!? The Giants blocked just well enough to allow Saquon to show off his massive quads and finally put up the big week we all know heâs capable of. 2 tuddies for the former Nittany Lion. Kyler was good again â leading his Cardinals to victory over Los Angeles – letâs see if history repeats itself on Wednesday (NL WC game reference for those who didnât get it). Apart from that, more general badness plagued Bradâs team as he dropped his 3rd straight. Forward looking, Iâm comfortable having Brad over Beans since Saquon is looking more and more like what made him the #1 pick just a few short seasons ago, and Beanâs is just not healthy at the moment.
#8. The Norse Horse â Kris Blaine (Previous Ranking: 8) Coming in at 8 for the second consecutive week is our Nordic brothen. Kris was the big winner of the Chubba Hubbard sweepstakes dropping 41 dunkaroos for his services (its fake money anyway, kind of like our national debt). Unfortunately, Kris couldnât drop any FAAB on a win â losing a low scoring affair to the Maximillians. Again, the injury bug reared its ugly head as David Montgomery, who looked prime to have his breakout game of the season, went down with an apparent knee injury thatâll sideline him indefinitely. Josh Allen and Diggs connected for a nice 40 burger between them. But apart from that, not much else went right. Carson, ARob and Aaron Jones all mustered less than 10 â yucky. But the real story was Kris getting confused and accidentally starting the Clarkstown North Rams defense against Arizona, who rightfully got abused for -5 points. No wait, Iâm told it was the real NFL Rams that played on Sunday â I could hardly tell the difference! Anyway, Kris, as a veteran of this League, you should have known better. And I expect better going forward.
#7. The Martians â Ryan OâConnell (Previous Ranking: 9) Choo-choooooo! You hear that? Thatâs the Martianâs bandwagon rolling into town after a big victory over the Schlongâs. Four weeks, 2 wins for #PlayoffMarz â his best start to date in four years of The League. Russell Wilson, Scary Terrys and Diontae Johnsonâs big weeks were more than enough for Ryan to secure the bag against a lowly Brad â but Gibson and Bucs D outscored their projections as well for good measure. I know I sound like a broken record, but I still hate Ryanâs RB room. Melvin Gordon going against a strong Ravens run d did what we expected, not much. David Johnson did even worse so at least Ryan played the right of his two shitty options. Davante and Mark Andrew had meh performances and CeeDee Lamb was just straight bad. Did he get hurt? I genuinely donât know cause I paid zero attention to the âBoys game but 2.3 points is concerningly low. Anyway, if he did, its not like Ryan wouldnât have the WR depth to stay afloat for a bit.
#6. Waller Nothing â Max Cohan (Previous Ranking: 7) What can I say about Max? To put it bluntly, Max is a fraud 3-1. Middle of the pack sure and better than the teams lower down on the list, but his team has underperformed what his record indicates. Put it this way, of all the teams with multiple wins, Max is the lowest scoring by quite a bit. Still, you only must beat who youâre going against â so no Max will not be apologizing. However, he should be apologizing for making us all suffer through his long-winded ode to Mike Williams on the pod last week. Well, Mikey finally proved who we thought he was all along, backing up his bossâs shit talk with a stinker. More of that to come, Iâm sure. A-A-Ron is back to playing like the incumbent MVP again so thatâs good news. Kareem Hunt is also pretty good despite being the #2 back in a loaded Browns backfield. Outside that, not much was happening for our man. Didnât matter though on account that Krisâs team stinks.
#5. Thomas and Friends â Andrew Vignali (Previous Ranking: 1) Motherfucker. A steep drop this week for #BrentsCommish after a stinker vs Abie. You may say 130 points is nothing to sneeze at, but quite frankly, my team left a lot of points on the board. And I needed to take this one against an injury depleted 69ers team. Thisâll sting for a while. Look no further than Dalvin Cook, Chris Godwin and Josh Jacobs who couldnât get anything going on Sunday/Monday. I knew it was a tall order considering Cook and Jacobs were returning from injury but come on boys â I DEMAND better. Hell, even Matt Gay missed a 40 yarder, a 5 point swing! Jalen Hurts was rock solid and Clyde Edwards-Helaire is suddenly good? Iâll take it. Also my live on the pod waiver addition of Dawson Knox proved to be one of the best moves of the week, 2 touchdowns! Sadly, it was all in vain. Looking forward to having a bounce back performance against Kris this week or else I might be in serious trouble.
#4. Buffalo Bonez â Thomas Antonello (Previous Ranking: 5) Whoah, who saw this turn around coming? Not me, thatâs for sure. My man Tommy Too Hotty is not just hot aesthetically, but his fantasy team is currently roasting. 3 straight victories after a dropping his inaugural matchup with Brad has seen Bonez climb all the way to the top of the standings and in a three-way tie with Max and Abie. I think technically heâd be first in a tiebreaker. You might be asking yourself why is he only ranked fourth? Well, itâs my column so I make the rules. Letâs start with what went right this week, which to put short and sweetly was everything except OBJ (any maybe Mike Evans?). I must highlight the Buffalo Bills D â who honored their namesake Bonez with an outstanding 21 points. Austin Ekeler, Chase Edmonds and Najee Harris are a powerful 1-2-3 RB punch. Hell, he won and even played the wrong QB (only by .14 pts). Especially if you can consistently count on double digits points from Noah Fant, I donât see many holes on this roster. Keep up the good work Bonez (hopefully Ekeler doesnât get injured).
#3. Jonathan Taylor Thomas 2.0 â Jack Staub (Previous Ranking: 3) Jack, the only negative thing I can say this week is that for your sake, you probably wish you didnât waste this weekâs performance on Beans. In the law of averages, youâre bound to put up a stinker eventually, so you might as well have cashed in on Beanâs anomaly this week with a slightly less of a stinker yourself and saved your 166 big ones (and this weeks high score) for a more worthy opponent. Thatâs even counting the Saints Dâs -3! Someone check the data, but this may be the first 100+ point margin of victory in LeagueStory. The story of this week was the WMD that Tyreek Hill, Deebo Samuel and Cordarelle Patterson dropped on Beans Corp. 105 combined points for the trio â more than enough to take down Beanso themselves. To top it off, Jonathan Taylor finally played like a first round pick and sniffed the endzone for the first time on the season. It really didnât matter that Tom Brady, Jamarr Chase and George Kittle sucked â this one was a laugher from the get-go.
#2. The Flandrewâs â Brent Gotkin (Previous Ranking: 2) Remember last weekâs Monday Night Massacre? It happened again, and Brent was victimized for the second week in a row. Not gonna lie, I kinda love to see it. 150 tall boys wasnât enough to take down the hottest name in fantasy. Still, Brentâs the highest scoring League member through 4 weeks, so respect must be put on his name. This matchup came down to what is so often does, the defenses. The Broncos couldnât get it done against Baltimore, and the 21 points Brent surrendered to Thomasâs defense was enough to ensure defeat. Naturally the Cowboysâ triplets had another monster game. Its scary to think that maybe Zeke is back. If Zach Wilson continues to play like he did on Sunday (hopefully for my sanity he does) than Corey Davis becomes an automatic weekly starty. Cooper Kupp finally had a pedestrian game, but you canât really complain there, heâs still WR1. Unfortunately, Joe Mixon went down with a knee injury late on Thursdayâs game, another reason why short weeks just suck in general. Anyway, Brent will look to end his 2 game losing streak against the rival Martians in what may be this weeks game of the week. Stay tuned.
#1. HOCKEYPRO69 â Abie Leider (Previous Ranking: 4) Congrats Abie, you bettered me. Defeating the previously ranked #1 team is grounds to shoot up the board into this weekâs #1 spot for the third time in 5 weeks. Not even my perfectly constructed team could match up with the greatest QB in NFL history, Pat Mahomes, who anal raped the Eagles secondary all Sunday long with five tds. At least one of them went to CEH. James Robinson and Derrick Henry also decimated the lowly Bungals and Jets defenses, each scoring a touchdown and adding an additional 20+ points. Tyler Bass added 16, Ravens D had a late pick in the endzone (a four point swing in our matchup) and Renfrow tacked on 13.5 Monday Night. All pretty good performances. Going forward, youâd like to see more from big names like DHop and TJ Hockenson. All in all, at full strength, the 69ers are just the best team on paper. And being 3-1 despite all the injuries shows you what a behind the scenes genius our boy Abie is â the early frontrunner for Coach of the Year.
Biggest Rise: HOCKEYPRO69 Biggest Fall: Thomas and Friends/Beans Corp
The pod should be an angry one this week so stay tuned. Anyway, I gotta sit down and watch the Red Sox hopefully lay the beat down on $324 million-dollar man Gerrit Cole, a nice little baseball break during the week as the NFL season rolls on. We also have to look forward to a decent TNF football matchup for once as the Rams visit the Seahawks. Both will be looking to keep pace in a loaded NFC West. Hopefully Jamal Adams does something embarrassing. Iâm rambling so Iâll leave you all with the sweetest two words in sportsâŚ
Fresh off a 72 hour bender, Commissioner Vigs earns some much needed shut-eye after a statement victory in week 3, reminding everyone in The League who’s still Top Dawg
I apologize for posting this a few days later than normal. It’s been an absolutely crazy last 72 hours for your fearless leader, but I made a commitment to you all and there was no way in Hell I was allowing the power rankings to wait another day. Bear with me, my brain is still fried from getting Xuong’d in the early morning hours of Wednesday (I’ll explain what that means at a later date), so my attempts at humor may prove futile. Anyway, let’s jump start this weeks power ranking with our number 10…
#10. South Jersey 4th & Schlong â Brad Peddito (Pervious Ranking: 8) The early part of the season has not been kind to our league newcomer and groom-to-be. As with each of the first 2 weeks, Brad’s team was not able to muster much despite Saquon’s biggest game of the season. Unfortunately for Brad, Kyler Murray allowed other AZ Cardinals to score touchdowns against the Jags, and couldn’t meet his lofty projections – which pretty much doomed Brad from the start of Sunday. I have to mention that Brad was also victimized by the first case of the the Will Fuller effect on the season, see Rondale Moore. Brandon McManus and Keenan Allen kept this one from being an absolute blowout, but things have to turn around quickly for Brad or else he’ll be playing for draft position come the second half. Oh wait, this is fantasy football so that doesn’t even matter. Sucks to be Brad I guess.
#9. The Martian’s – Ryan O’Connell (Previous Ranking: 6) There were quite a few teams in the running for this spot and from my point of view, the next 5 or so ranked teams are all pretty similar and depending on the week can fall anywhere. For now, I’ll put Marzy here mainly because I think looking forward, his team will struggle the most. The Martian’s only have 3 RBs on their team, two of which are not even #1 options in a RB by committee system, a concerning lack of depth. Ryan is very deep at WR however, so maybe a trade could be had? This week, Playoff Marz got burned by TB defense, Terry and CeeDee, all of whom missed their projections. Russell Wilson wasn’t great either. Outside of Davante, no other notable performances from the Martian’s. I’m already bored of looking at his team so I’ll just move on.
#8. The Norse Horse – Kris Blaine (Previous Ranking: 10) Finally picking up his first win of the season was enough to move the Nordic’s up 2 spots in the rankings, even though they remain the lowest scoring team that does not play their games in South Jersey. The story of last week was the timely trade that saw Kris balance out his team and acquire one of the premier WR-QB combos in the NFL with Diggs and Allen, adding a decent RB in Chris Carson, while shipping out Kelce. Got all that? Anyway, Kris took down the roomie Jack and dropped a pretty average 122 points. I think the Bears offense is gonna suck going forward which is bad news for Montgomery and Allen Robinson. Honestly, if not for Aaron Jones and Josh Allen, Kris probably loses this week more often than not. But, 8th is still better than 10th, so keep up the good work pal.
#7. Waller Nothing – Max Cohan (Previous Ranking: 9) Joining us on the Podcast this week, Max came out spitting facts about Mike Williams. I am sorry I ever doubted him. With Justin Herbert slingin’ it, Magic Mike has enjoyed a start to the season that parallels the likes of Jerry Rice, Terrell Owens and Pablo Sanchez. So after making that admission, Max’s team on paper is good enough to jump up 2 spots here. I still don’t love a Kamara/Elijah Mitchell running back room. Starting 2 Minnesota WRs is a dicey situation, escpecially when one of them is the previously unheard of KJ Osbourne. I think Max often times tries to get too cute and outsmart himself with his decision making. Just look at the fact that he’s been in on every random RB that makes news even though they suck (LeVeon Bell, Kerryon Johnson, Devonta Freeman). All are worthless as fantasy options. Moving on.
#6. Beans Corp – Brendan Cahill (Previous Ranking: 7) Looks like Bean’s finally figured out they key to victory – score only 108 points! Well, that works when you go against Brad. Anyway, Beanso is finally off the schnide mainly because Justin Herbert finds playing NFL football too easy. D’Andre Swift continues to roll and Arizona was the defensive pickup of the week (I should’ve dropped some FAAB on that one). Not much else went right for Beansy but it didn’t matter, this game was over the moment it started. It’ll be a slog for the next couple weeks as Brendan has to work around CMC’s hammy, shocked he wasn’t in play more for Chuba Hubbard. This is why we handcuff! James White also is out for the season now, not that you would play him much anyway.
#5. Buffalo Bonez – Thomas Antonello (Previous Ranking: 5) 126 points and a victory over the Martians was enough for the Buffalo’s to hold onto the #5 spot for another week. Najee Harris, Austin Ekeler and Justin Jefferson all rock and rolled, combining for half of Tommy’s point total. 14 points is very respectable for shitty Mike Evans, don’t count on it every week. The bad this week were Noah Fant and Ty’Son Chicken Williams, but nothing you can really do about that. Tommy got some good news with OBJ back to provide some depth for that flex position, so something to look at going forward.
#4. HOCKEYPRO69 – Abie Leider (Previous Ranking: 1) Ouch, it was tough to be Abie’s team in more ways than one. The 69ers finally dropped their first game of the season in week 3 to Max, but the story of this matchup was the damage done to Abie’s lineup. DHop, Julio and Sterling Shepard are all banged up and their availability in the immediate future is in doubt. Not exactly what you wanna see when your top 2 WRs on the bench are currently on IR. As I write this, I see Abie is already scrambling to add depth and picked up slot gawd Hunter Renfroe out of Vegas for $11. Hey Abie, I’ll take Derrick Henry off your hands if you want to try and work something out. Throw in a bad week for TJ Hockenson and Patrick Mahomes (by his standards), Abie was only able to muster a measly 106 points on Sunday. Tough sledding ahead.
#3. Jonathan Taylor Thomas 2.0 – Jack Staub (Previous Ranking: 3) Hey Jack, maybe come up with a fancy chart that will help you win games? I kid, I kid, you do a great job with your weekly content. Sadly, the same couldn’t be said for the JTT2.0’s on Sunday. While you were out experimenting with some mind altering drugs and listening to Fall Out Boy or whatever the fuck you do at GovBall, your team was falling apart on the field. Still waiting on that breakout game from Jonathan Taylor? Cause it wasn’t this week. Tyreek, Singletary, Kenyan Drake, Deebo and Tyler Lockette all struggled mightily. Save for Tom Brady scoring a bunch of garbage time touchdowns and a pick 6 and 3 turnovers by the Saints D, it could’ve been an all time bad week. Heck, they happen. Jack’s still the #3 highest scoring team on the season so no need to hit the panic button just yet.
#2. The Flandrew’s – Brent Gotkin (Previous Ranking: 2) This one hurts to look at, but as someone who likes to see Brent suffer a little bit, I am happy nonetheless. Brent was 2.02 points awat from being this weeks highest scorer for the 2nd time on the season… and still managed to lose a close one. I honestly thought this was a wrap after the 1:00 games on Sunday, but Cooper Kupp and the Bronco’s D had other thoughts. Things couldn’t have been closer heading into MNF, with the Cowboys triplets within striking distance of pulling off a comeback. Zeke and Dak had good games, but fortunately/unfortunately Amari Cooper had one of those weeks were he disappeared and it wasn’t enough. Joe Mixon, Kyle Pitts and AJ Brown all disappeared for large stretches of their game. Not even the longest kick in LeagueStory (thanks for that portmanteau @Jack) could bail out the Brent’s on this one. And like that, no undefeated teams remain.
#1. Thomas and Friends – Andrew Vignali (Previous Ranking: 4) Well, we all knew this one was coming. For the second year in a row, I went on the pod and guaranteed that I’d hand Brent his first loss of the season. And for the second year in a row, I delivered. No Dalvin Cook, no Darrell Henderson, No Josh Jacobs, it didn’t matter. Alexander Mattison is the best handcuff in the NFL (thanks Max – how’s Parris Campbell treating you?). I picked up Emmanuel Sanders for FREE on Sunday morning cause I had a bad feeling about starting James Conner. Well Conner managed 17 points, but Sanders dropped 23 and that was the difference between victory and defeat for Da Commish. DK finally DK’d for the first time in 3 weeks, and CEH got the message after I put him on blast after week 2. Just don’t fumble next week please! Godwin and Hurts did alright, but Jonnu didn’t. He’s already gone as I picked up Dawson Knox, Go Bills. Anyway, let’s keep the good times rolling with a week 4 pounding of Abie.
Biggest Rise: Thomas and Friends Biggest Fall: HOCKEYPRO69/The Martian’s
After 3 weeks, thing are pretty much shaping up to what I expected. The two preseason favorites, Brent and myself, are at the top. Ryan is not. Still, a loooong way to go so don’t get discouraged. First and last place are separated by only 1 game – a league first! Anyway, I gotta take a nap as I’m still running on fumes. Enjoy Joe Burrow and Trevor Lawrence tonight before their respective offensive lines have them hospitalized with broken ribs.
Alright chucklefucks, I’m back in the office for the first time in probably a full week (that’s a lot for me) and of course I drank coffee way too late in the day and stretched an order of Dunkin hash browns across 6 hours (that’s 1 hashbrown per hour or hbph for those in a rush). Basically I did a bunch of useless shit in the office until I felt I had done enough to say I’ve been productive and then realized I was really hungry and dehydrated. Now I’m sitting here with a bunch of Chick-Fil-A and water, ready to crank this out and get to the gym for a bit before The Challenge comes on at 8. Hopefully my debaucherous roommate will be able to join me, I know he needs to take a load off (or maybe he’s done that enough already after last night). Hahahah alright I’m trying too hard to make jokes, analysis time:
As you can see above, there weren’t a ton of players that had multiple people putting in offers this week, but the top two had two bids each. Brad handsomely outbid me for Rondale Moore, spending $34 FAAB for a 1.4 point payday. This happens to be the largest difference between dollars spent and points scored in the HISTORY of The Wire, as meaningless as that may be. Seriously, there’s no significance to that metric, who’s to say that he doesn’t score 50 points next week and then he’d be worth every dollar spent? Nobody, that’s who. But we like to have fun with numbers here, so a little perceived positive or negative impact can be good fun for The League, and one thing they always say about us here at Must Be Sunday is that we like to have fun. I guess we’ll see next week if Chubba Hubbard puts up less than 8.4, then there’ll be a new sheriff in town when it comes to overspending.
Next biggest purchase was quite possibly one of the best FAAB pick-ups I’ve seen. King Bean$0 swooped in and grabbed the Cardinals D like a cardinal would grab a stick with a worm on it or some shit to bring home for its babies. In the case of Beans Corp. however, the Arizona defense scored 5 more points than the amount of dollars spent, which again means next to nothing but is fun to see. On top of this, a real consequence of the pick-up was the Company’s much-needed win against none other than our top spender this week, Brad. As you can see in the chart above, the Cardinals 15 points were INSTRUMENTAL in Beans Corp’s win by 11.7, without that pick-up we may have seen the anticipated “I Don’t Wanna Be Around Anymore” article from the CEO. Right now he’s riding a high though with all his teams on the upswing, so enjoy it.
I’ll mention now how I spent another 6 FAAB bucks on a useless player in Demetric Felton. I should have known, yards are not in De-Metric System. That brings me up to $10, or one Hamilton, down the drain. We’ll see if Dalton Schultz does me any favors as a worthy back-up for Kittle.
As many of you know, I spent this past Sunday at the Governor’s Ball Music Festival, and while Andrew Cuomo’s testicles did not make an appearance, I thoroughly enjoyed the vibes instead of constantly checking the fantasy app or ESPN for score updates. Between the lack of cell service in the Citi Field parking lot and the sheer number of people in attendance, I was hardly able to send or receive anything from about 4pm to 10:30pm. I knew things weren’t looking great for my by 4, so I decided not to worry about it and stuck to dancing, eating, drinking, and giving Mr. Met the old “va fangool”. I digress though, when I got around to compiling the point totals and everything else that goes into this production, I fully realized just how close I actually was to winning against Kris this week, if not for a few calculated moves made in the lead-up to our match-up. I will detail them below:
Defense and kicker. One of my leagues doesn’t even have kickers, and it all came down to these positions that people will not care about. If you read this column, you’ll know that they can make or break you in any given week, but also who the hell knows when one’s gonna pop off? Daniel Carlson with a twelver (double his prior K, Jason Myers, as well as double the $ spent) and Panthers D/ST with a tenner for free are what ultimately did me in after all the bad RB/WR moves I made with my roster. If it’s Myers and the Rams D, I’d be the one with the big smile and the blonde hair and the well-defined muscles. Instead, it’s Kris. I’d like to say it’s just classic me getting in my own way, but in reality I was beaten at my own game. Well done buddy, if you beat me again in Week 11 then I’ll still be up 4-3 on you all time đ
If you’ve been keeping up with the blog, you’ll have heard all you needed from Max about his team winning this week. He’s handling success like a cool-looking duck, calm and cool-looking on the surface but frantically paddling paddling paddling below. Our man with the mic ran the gauntlet of available running backs, ending on Peyton Barber and Ameer Abdullah. Both men sat at gametime however, with Barber racking up an impressive 21.7 points. Probably lucky for us that he wasn’t given a starting spot, as it would have embiggened the already impressive 34.74 point win margin, and our newly signed contributor may have taken over my job writing The Wire this week and just typed Peyton Barber and Mike Williams over and over again. Just remember: anybody can get it, the hard part is keeping it mothafucka.
Lastly, I’d be remiss to not mention the moves made by our mostly-beloved Commissioner and my A-1 roommate. After a shaky Draft Day and Opening Day loss to the guy with the most PA through three weeks, it seems like Thomas and Friends is getting itself “on track”. See what I did there? At what I want to say was the very last possible minute on Sunday before game time, Vigsy picked up veteran Emmanuel Sanders as a body to round out the his line-up in a tilt against the powerhouse that is Brent. The unlikely hero ended up spazzing out, catching 5 of 6 targets for 94 yards and 2 of Josh Allen’s 4 touchdowns (and none for Devin Singletary, bye!) This almost certainly helped the Friends pull ahead after a nail-biter of a Monday Night game… But wait, that’s not all! You may not have even noticed this on your first look at the chart, but waaay back on Wednesday there was a little free agent pick-up by the Commish for a little defense from a little town in Nevada. That’s right *Chris Berman voice* THE RAIDERS! To say that this match-up was a nail-biter honestly doesn’t begin to describe it, because if this little pick-up didn’t happen and Vigs ended up using the Bears Defense, Brent wins by a margin of 0.58 if everysinglething else stays the same. Truly incredible. At some point on that day, Vigs actually mentioned to me that he was hoping to be sneaky and grab the Cardinals D/ST early that morning before realizing Beans had swooped in like a baby bird or whatever I said before, and so he had to settle for the Raiders instead. I thought nothing of it at the time, but looking back now we can see, in the words of Bobby Frost, “that has made all the difference.”
Okay, and that’s my story! Enjoy the other charts below, I need to take a shit from the Chick-Fil-A and it looks like I’m Citi-biking it home instead of the gym since The Challenge is on in about a half hour. For now this has been The Wire, tune in next week for coverage of the all-out brawl over CMC’s replacement and other fun tidbits that no one else cares about. Don’t spend it all in one place, but Ryan and Vigs maybe start spending some at all, some of these guys are running low…
New feature I like to call “Budget Pies”, shows your percentage of all unspent FAAB bucks. Will update publicly every 4 weeks to get a nice even look, and maybe at the end of the season I’ll stack them on top of each other and make a slideshow out of it heheh.
There comes a time in every man’s life when they have to block out the haters. In my case, this is a frequent occurance.
Recently, a lot of hate has been thrown my way for deciding to consistently start Chargers’ WR Mike Williams.
Sure, the 26-year-old isn’t Cooper Kupp or Tyreek Hill, but those guys weren’t available anyway.
In any case, the hosts of the “well known” League Talk podcast have constantly questioned the decision to start the Los Angeles flanker. Did they have reason to? Perhaps. Have I proved them wrong? Indeed.
In three weeks of fantasy action, Mike Williams has been on a tear (18.2 week 1, 18.6 week 2, 29.7 week 3). For those with limited math skills, that’s an average of 22.1 points per week. According to ESPN, that makes Williams the second highest scoring wide receiver in all of football. Look it up, it’s true.
Well who cares about individual stats if you’re losing? Likely no one. But I’m no loser.
After a brutal loss to Thomas & Friends, I had to face the league’s most feared team — HockeyPro 69 (or something like that). Again, most predicted I would fall to the mighty Abie. Again, they were wrong. With a little help from Mike Williams, Waller Nothing took this one 141.64 to 106.9. Not even close.
As the great Michael Jordan once said, “I’m back.”
Zoom in for some fun. The same K-Diff and P-Diff you know and love, but with some extra info sprinkled on top.
Man oh man oh man. I tell you one thing though: it’s good to be back! We have an all new chart set-up to not care about, and a whole lot of reading to not read. I’m excited, hope you are too. If you’re just reading this as I’m posting, I’d probably go to sleep and start with this fresh in the morning. It’ll be like the morning paper, but better. Also, did you see that I’m listed as the author of this post instead of Beans? Plus I gave myself a cool ramen noodle avi, nothing to do with football. If you want to get your name in the author space, hit me up with an e-mail address and we’ll get you on the payroll. But I digress, let’s get into it:
Auction: We had our first big scramble for a player, as well as our first 30-burger! The big winner, our reigning champ Brent, went on to trade Mr. Mitchell after spending nearly a third of his entire budget. It’s a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it works out. Max, Brad, Thomas and Abie all put up some money for Elijah “The Prophet” as well and lived to see another day. Check out the chart at the bottom of the column, I’m keeping track of that shit.
Abie spent $13 FAAB on Sterling Shepard, who put up that same amount of points in his Sunday Slaughter of yours truly. I guess he didn’t have to worry about replacing Raheem Mostert when Derrick Henry plays like 3 RBs in one.
Max Cohan. Who did you sell your soul to for Elijah Mitchell? Everyone who was anyone from 9/13 to 9/14 was talking about picking that bad boy up, and you got him for free? You even “outbid” Brad for Kenneth Gainwell, even though he had a higher offer, since he ended up getting Mark Ingram II for $8 and choosing Baker Mayfield as the player to drop for every offer (including Jared Goff, who got a $5 bid (same as Kenneth)). Hey Brad, you saving Sony Michel for later or something?
Nobody really had positive returns on their FAAB pick-ups this week, but one team who definitely saw a negative return was our other new guy Tommy Bonez, who dropped Graham Gano (22 pts.) for Ryan Succop (5 pts.). At least he only spent a buck and still got the win.
As a refresher and for the new guys, a player’s name highlighted blue means they’ve been added or dropped already this year, with a red/orange border meaning they’ve been added/dropped multiple times. The rest of the colors are just to show how high or low your offer is, or the positive or negative point returns the player/team saw the week of the acquisition.
Add/Drop New for this season, I’m also going to highlight some of the good and bad free agent pick-ups. It’s definitely nice to see that all the players who were added scored more points than their dropped counterparts (even though a lot were due to injuries), but three transactions stood out to me this week:
Beans picked up Jared Cook who got a couple points. I wrote this down but I don’t think it really has to do with Jared Cook, but he could have won if he played James White instead of Miles Sanders. Sorry to rub it in, who could have known?
Daaaaaaaaaa BEARS. Their defense went on a tear this week and helped Justin Fields get his first W, you love to see it. Especially from the previously downtrodden Commish on a week when you’re not playing him. This add definitely helped Vigs in his win over the Jewish Journalist. L’Shana Tova, buddy.
If you’re like me, then you watched a seven-part YouTube documentary on the History of the Atlanta Falcons (shoutout Jon Bois and the rest of Dorktown). If you watched that documentary, then you know that the Falcons always find a way to screw up in the most surprising but at the same time predictable ways. That kind of luck came my way when I decided to hang back from the auction and pick up Cordarelle Patterson as a handcuff to Mike Davis, then he proceeded to sit on the bench where he notched a pair of TDs and 21 points (about the same margin I lost to Abie by). Classic.
“New charts, what do you think?” That’s a little riff on a quote from the business card scene of American Psycho. Problematic Alert, uhhhh you know you’re not supposed to idolize those characters right??? Well then why the fuck are they all so COOL and GOOD LOOKING? I blame Hollywood, the jerks. Anyway, here look at this:
New Money Report that shows the highest amount offered by a team in one week (for all players), the most spent in one week, and the total $ saved (this one will be interesting…) The chart I posted a few weeks ago showing all your budget depletions is in the works as well.
This one will also be interesting to track week by week as well as with the totals. Blue means you’ve been cold on the Wire (not a lot of moves made), with the opposite being hot (I don’t think I needed to explain that). Your ideal color combos is that deep blue and deep green, of course, but it depends on the situation as well. Also, it doesn’t matter if the player you picked up starts or sits, it just gets netted with the dropped player’s points. Even playing field.
Okay, it’s late. I need to get myself hydrated for another fun day at work now that all my content has been created. Just kidding, I’ll probably set up for next week with the Auction Report from yesterday. Some more big buys, maybe some big points in return? Who’s to say? In about 22 hours, Week 3 will begin. For now, this has been The Wire, thanks for hanging in there if you’ve read this far, hopefully there will be less stuff to explain next week and maybe I won’t write the column Stoney Baloney like I did this week đ
(this is basically the sentiment of every post in this series)
This is one I’ve wanted to put together for a little while now and it was pretty easy so I’m glad I finally did it. Since we have almost 500 games under the collective belt of this illustrious League, I wanted to see if the frequency of points scored in a game adhered to Normal Distribution and created a Bell Curve (remember stats class?) …and sure enough, it did đ
A few things to notice: -All point totals are rounded to make the chart a bit more readable and increase the frequencies. -The most common point total is 126, followed by 131 and 117 (for all you betting men). -Watch out if your point total in a given week rounds to 144 or 161 (you might lose), and don’t feel too bad if your point total only hits 71 (you might still win).
Alright, good quick post. Gotta go try and make up for the 3.5 hours I spent on this crap yesterday, but The Wire Week 2 will be dropping some time today or maybe tomorrow before TNF. Go League!
Derrick Henry runs through a defender on the way to carrying Abie to the #1 spot in this weeks power rankings
Oh man, is it already time to update the Power Rankings? Chet YouBetcha it is. I always say that week two of the regular season is the most important game you play all season. A 2-0 start can springboard your fantasy team for a deep playoff run. An 0-2 start, you might as well pack your bags and start preparing for next season (or in our case for the standup stage). Nobody, and I mean nobody, wants to face the embarrassment of an 0-2 start and fortunately for yours truly, I faced Max in a laugher and avoided that dreaded fate. The same can’t be said for everyone, however. So without further ado â letâs jump into this weekâs rankings with our number 10 teamâŚ.
#10. The Norse Horse â Kris Blaine (Previous Ranking: 7) Am I really dropping Kris to last place this early in the season? Youâre goddamn right. Kris has had a disastrous start to the 2021 campaign, dropping his first two games without much of a fight. While things certainly improved over last week, still not nearly went right enough to keep either game all that competitive. I wrote last week about how I expected Allen Robinson, Josh Allen and Damien Harris to perform much better. Well guess what? They didnât. It appears the Myles Gaskin experiment has ceased, as Kris benched him and his whopping 6.6. Jarvis and Juju are both tremendously overrated. Pretty much only Kelce and Aaron Jones showed up this week, not enough if youâre a Kris fantasy football supporter.
#9. Waller Nothing â Max Cohan (Previous Ranking: 6) Oof. This was just one of those weeks. Weâve all had them before and for as long as we play fantasy, weâll continue to have them. But they still hurt all the same. Nothing, absolutely nothing, went right for Max on Sunday. From about 2:00 in the afternoon on Sunday on, Maxâs win probability did not climb above 1%. What do you expect when someone in your lineup drops a goose-egg, and still wasnât the worst guy on your team. Iâm speaking of course of Jason Sanders and Steelers D (fuck you Lebron). Kamara had one of those games weâre he disappeared. Max is scrambling to find a reliable RB2, and Iâll tell you it isnât Elijah Mitchell â thanks for literally handing Kyle Pitts to Brent. Your WRs actually put up a respectable 45 points combined, but far too little from everyone else doomed Maxâs fate as he settled for the number 9 spot. Gotta get better.
#8. South Jersey 4th & Schlong â Brad Peddito (Pervious Ranking: 8) Well, if it wasnât for Maxâs abomination, Iâd probably have dropped Brad a spot here. Maybe you should send some sort of Edible Arrangement Maxâs way for keeping you numero Ocho. Week 2 really stung as Brad dropped a very winnable game against the defending champion Flandrewâs. I tried to warn yâall in last weekâs column- Iâll say it again in case you missed it. Saquon Barkley is doo-doo. Canât expect to win many games when youâre number 1 draft pick is so shitty. Kyler Murray remains Brad’s lone bright spot, scoring another 4 tds. Put his little legs and rocket arm couldnât drum up much scoring for the rest of the Bradâs lineup, which combined for a measly 70 points. Devonta Smith kinda stinks, so does Ronald Jones. The best thing I can say is Nick Chubb did kind of ok and Brandon McManus is good. Thatâs about it.
#7. Beans Corp â Brendan Cahill (Previous Ranking: 3) Is it to early to hit the panic button here? Not for the Corporation which demands excellence and has the track record to back it up. Beanâs is a hard luck 0-2, but winless all the same. And for that, I canât justify him being any higher on this list. What went right in week 2? For one, CMC did what he does, no further explanation needed. Courtland Sutton, Chris Carson and Stefon Diggs performed well. And as I write this, the Pats D just intercepted Zach Wilson again. So what went wrong? Well â he faced Ryan who was desperate to end his own losing streak. Tampaâs D recorded 2 pick 6âs in about 5 min and doomed any chance of the Beanâs winning this week, but I wonât go much further into that game because at number 6 we got the aforementioned…..
#6. The Martians â Ryan OâConnell (Previous Ranking: 9) Marrrrzy. The comeback kid and feel-good story of The League, Ryan needed a victory in this one to get his season on track. And get one he did. Scary Terry and Russell Wilson dropped a combined 55 big ones, Davante Adams and Diontae Johnson had nice bounce back performances and Tampaâs two pick sixes was easily enough to eat a W as Jameis Winston would say, even with Melvin Gordon still as your RB2. Iâll trade you CEH for him straight up. Only kidding (or am I?). Hey Beans, at least the Cowboys won.
#5. Buffalo Bonez â Thomas Antonello (Previous Ranking: 10) You know the saying âOh how the mighty have fallen?â. Well I guess this is a case of the unmighty rising. Last weekâs last ranked team and lowest scorer, the Buffaloâs went worst to first in week 2, leading the way with an outstanding 162 points andgood enough to shoot up 5 spots week to week. Everybody on Bonezâs team minus Succop scored in the double figures, exactly the kind of production you want to have. Najee, Ekeler, Justin Jefferson and Noah Fant all bounced back. Mike Evans and Bills D exploded all over the expense of all 10 combined Falcons and Dolphins fans. But the story of this week was Lamar, who minus an opening pick 6 absolutely demolished the Chiefs D, going for 32 points and (even more impressive) a victory over Pat Mahomes. Keep this up and next year Bonez will be showing up at the draft wearing his signed Austin Ekeler jersey.
#4. Thomas and Friends â Andrew Vignali (Previous Ranking: 5) Keep the ball rolling, keep the ball rollllllling. Back-to-back strong performances from a suspect at best squad entering the season has seen yours truly rise 5 spots from our initial power rankings and into the top 4. Where did I go right? Well I had the foresight to see the Bears D matchup against the lowly Bungles and snatched them up for free off the waiver list Saturday morning. 3 Joey B interceptions later and I was on the right side of a laugher against Max. Jalen Hurts, Dalvin, Godwin and Brandin Cooks all rocked â thanks guys. Now for the bad, Clyde Edwards Helaire. C-E-H is playing more like P-O-O, dropping a measly 2.6 points and literally fumbling the game away against Baltimore. So far he seems like a wasted 2nd round pick. Jonnu Smith and DK both sucked as well. And lastly, Iâll be remise to not mention the injury bug struck Darrell Henderson, forcing him to leave in the 3rd Quarter against Indy. Something to monitor going forward along with Josh Jacobs’s ankle. But for now, the number 4 spot for the 3rd highest scoring team through 2 weeks sounds about right. Go Me.
#3. Jonathan Taylor Thomas 2.0 â Jack Staub (Previous Ranking: 3) Motherfucker, why couldnât I play Jack this week? Not that 129 point is anything to sneeze at, but itâs a sharp drop from the 157 the JTT2.0âs dropped last week. If youâre asking yourself what happened, look no further than Tyreek Hill, who last week couldnât stop scoring TDs, and this week largely disappeared. Good game planning from the Ravens, I guess. I might put out a hit on Tyler Lockett if he keeps stealing targets and points from my man DK. Deebo, Jamar and Singletary did good. Jonathan Taylor and George Kittle did not. Just one of those days. For the first time in the history of fantasy football, someone (Jack) is really regretting not starting Cordarrelle Patterson. One day that might end up a Jeopardy question. Lastly, Tom Brady played better than Zach Wilson. Shit happens.
#2. The Flandrewâs â Brent Gotkin (Previous Ranking: 1) To say Brent was lucky to escape this week with a victory is an understatement, which sucks for everybody else. Brent was the 8th highest scoring team on Sunday, but was victorious on account that I scheduled him to play Brad, sorry folks. Still, Brent is 2-0 and most of us arenât. Last week we had Max winning with his QB scoring under 10, this week is was Dakâs pitiful 7.48 that somehow got the job done. Iâll say this, Cooper Kupp is the best (white) wide receiver in the history of the NFL. Prove me otherwise. AJ Brown, Amari Cooper, Kyle Pitts and Joe Mixon did mostly nothing. Did it matter? No, because Zeke scored a touchdown for the first time since 2018 and DJ Moore now has the Golden Child Sam Darnold playing QB in Carolina. Man, I wish the Jets had someone like him. Anyway, wasnât really impressed with Brentâs team all that much but a win is a win, so the #2 spot it is.
#1. HOCKEYPRO69 â Abie Leider (Previous Ranking: 2) One week out of the top spot was one too many for my man Abie. It looked like for much of Sunday, Abie was going to be an unhappy camper. But then Derrick Henry awoke, remembered that he is literally a man playing amongst boys and made the Seahawks D looks like Bishop Sycamore for much of the second half. You remember how the whole stadium would yell at Forrest Gump to run, and then heâd go 95 yards to the house untouched until the fans yelled to stop? It was essentially that. Thankfully Derrickâs IQ exceeds 75. Pat Mahomes only scored 23, which for a mortal QB is more like a 13 point game, so I guess he kind of stinks now. DHop scored 13 points through the first quarter and then didnât record a single target the rest of the game. Didnât matter. Honestly, the rest of Abieâs team did nothing spectacular. Nothing bad obviously, but a lot of meh performances, nothing to write home about. But I like him better than Brent and so for at least one more week, Abie is king of the castle.
Thatâs all she wrote on week 2. Come back next week to see where your team lands after what is sure to be an entertaining week 3. Donât go spending all your FAAB all in one place. And as always, Go League!
Now that everyone has at least one win, I decided to put this little grid together to show who you’ve won against (and conversely, who you’ve lost against).
Some things to notice: – The only active shutout is held by Kris, with 4 wins against Max and 0 losses. Will we see a continuation of this trend in Week 4? Or will Max break the streak? For what it’s worth, in the two seasons Lebron was active he was shut out by Brendan (3-0) and myself (2-0), so these things happen. Here’s the chaser, Max: – The most frequent match-up has been Me vs. Max (9 games), in which I’ve dropped 7 of them. I know for sure one of my 2 wins was in a no-stakes consolation game in the playoffs, but it seems Max always knows how to put another tick in my loss column. Way to go, see ya Week 5. – The second-most frequent match-up of Abie vs. Brendan is currently neck and neck with 4 games won on each side. This leads me into the handful of other historical match-ups that currently sit at even: 3-3: Max & Vigs 2-2: Me & Brent, Abie & Kris, Vigs & Ryan, Brent & Max
And that’s about all she wrote as of now. I’ll be maintaining this list as I have with everything else in the Must Be Sunday Universe, at the expense of my actual job and CPA exam studying. For now, enjoy looking at and discussing this little piece of LeagueStory, as well as strategizing how you can put that next win in the books!
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Must Be Sunday 